


Shifting Sands

by lilhawkeye3



Series: Shifting Sands [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Planet Tatooine (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:01:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28377396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhawkeye3/pseuds/lilhawkeye3
Summary: As the twin suns of Tatooine watch overhead, you come upon the still form of one of the universe’s lost souls. Boba Fett might have been left for dead, but you just might be the one to give him a second chance at living.
Relationships: Boba Fett/Reader
Series: Shifting Sands [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2071263
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	Shifting Sands

**Author's Note:**

> Gender neutral pronouns will be used for the Reader to be as inclusive as possible, but there will be sexually explicit content in this fic in the coming chapters and physically, the Reader will be described as “assigned female at birth” (afab).

The sands of Tatooine are a harsh mistress. Life here is all about what one lacks— lack of water, lack of shelter from the sun, lack of purpose... all of these have been known to destroy even the strongest of men.

Tatooine was all you knew. The shifting ocean of sand, the beating sun, the raging storms. Those were all manageable after years of experience. It was the harshness of other beings, the greed of life that truly stood as an obstacle.

News travelled fast on most days, given that information was one of the highest currencies on the planet. Visitors typically only came here for such, so natives gathered as much as they could in the hopes of trading for necessities. It was only fitting that news of the fall of Jabba’s palace should reach your ears within hours.

It didn’t mean anything particularly interesting for your life as a whole. Yes, the threat of Jabba’s unsavory visitors was lessened, but it also meant that there’d be less trade available in that region as a whole. It was a good thing you had other means to keep you on your feet: your herd, scrapping, and moisture farming.

At least, that’s what you originally thought.

But then you saw the still body in the sand on your way back from tending to the herd, and the sands shifted on the balance of fate. 

* * *

When you first come upon him, you’re fairly certain he’s dead. Bodies weren’t that still in the open suns on Tatooine unless they were devoid of life. The sand had hidden his left side from view and buried him in his own little dune, the only visible aspects of him the dark underclothes against the reflective desert.

Your scarf is up around your face and you pull it a bit tighter before crouching down next to the body. You make sure to try and get the sand off him, but only doing it bits at a time, not wanting to change his body temperature too quickly. The sand would’ve been able to keep him cool and out of the direct light of the twin suns. It was when you reached out and brushed off their face that you saw it was a man. Even in his half dead state, you were awed by his striking features.

There was blood and sand caked across the left half of his face, and you knew you’d be needing water before you’d be able to see any specifics about him. And yet, you still could make out his strong brow and sharp jawline, the crooked build of his nose that let you know it’d been broken many times before. His eyes may have been shut, but you could tell he’d never been at peace.

You don’t know what spurred you on, but you found yourself reaching out to brush his cheek, grains of sand falling away softly to join the sea around you. He doesn’t flinch at all under your touch, which settles you and spurs you onwards. You run your hands along the stained scraps of fabric covering the rest of his body, trying to feel if there were any severe injuries that would keep you from moving him. He twitches when your hand rests against his lower ribs, and again at his left thigh. Between the locations of those two injuries, you knew it wouldn’t be safe to try and carry him, something that was probably for the best. You doubted you could lift him on your own anyways.

You needed to get him out of the open desert as quickly as you could. The suns are beginning to rise to their maximum height, and the last thing he needs is to be exposed to the elements any longer than he already has been. 

You don’t have much on you, though; if you’d been going out scavenging you’d have been better prepared to cart a whole man home with you. You have to work with what you’ve got. Your outer layers are just going to have to make do as a sling.

A part of you can’t help but wonder if this is all for naught, if the sacrifice of your protective layers will mean another weary soul of the desert will come across both of your bodies, dried out to husks by the suns. You’ll be breaking one of the first and most important rules of survival by trying to save this half-dead man: your life before others.

Of course, you’ll be breaking the second most important rule as well: keep the suns and sand off your skin. 

Perhaps you should have realized this as a foreshadowing of what lengths you’d eventually go to for this individual once you knew him. 

The desert is the past, present, and future. It knows what you’re blind to.

The heat is already sinking into your bones once you’ve wrapped your scarves around his chest and under his arms so his head rests against the fabric as you drag him through the burning sand. You mutter apologies under your breath every time you glance back at his still form, but each of them becomes meaningless as you continue to trudge forward.

He’ll survive this. You’ll make sure he does.

(He needs to be alive so you can curse him out for all the sand you’ve swallowed by giving up your face scarf to give him a chance that the universe seems to have wanted to deprive him of.)


End file.
